Sir Thomas Elyot is the first English prose writer who avowedly
attempted to cultivate the language of his country. We track the prints
of the first weak footsteps in this new path; and we detect the
aberrations of a mind intent on a great popular design, but still vague
and uncertain, often opposed by contemporaries, yet cheered by the
little world of his readers.
ELYOT for us had been little more than a name, as have been many retired
students, from the negligence of contemporaries, had he not been one of
those interesting authors who have let us into the history of their own
minds, and either prospectively have delighted to contemplate on their
future enterprises, or retrospectively have exulted in their past
labours.
This amiable scholar had been introduced at Court early in life; his
"great friend and crony was Sir Thomas More;" so plain Anthony a Wood
indicates the familiar intercourse of two great men. Elyot was a
favourite with Henry the Eighth, and employed on various embassies,
particularly on the confidential one to Rome to negotiate the divorce of
Queen Katherine. To his public employments he alludes in his first work,
"The Governor," which "he had gathered as well of the sayings of most
noble authors, Greek and Latin, as by his own experience, he being
continually trained in some daily affairs of the public weal from his
childhood."
A passion for literature seems to have prevailed over the ambition of
active life, and on his return from his last embassy he decided to write
books "in our vulgar tongue," on a great variety of topics, to instruct
his countrymen. The diversity of his reading, and an unwearied pen,
happily qualified, in this early age of the literature of a nation, a
student who was impatient to diffuse that knowledge which he felt he
only effectually possessed in the degree, and in the space, which he
communicated it.
His first elaborate work is entitled, "The Boke of the Governor, devised
by Sir Thomas Elyot," 1531,--a work once so popular, that it passed
through seven or eight editions, and is still valued by the collectors
of our ancient literature.
"The Governor" is one of those treatises which, at an early period of
civilization, when general education is imperfect, becomes useful to
mould the manners and to inculcate the morals which should distinguish
the courtier and the statesman. Elyot takes his future "Governor" in the
arms of his nurse, and places the ideal being amid all the scenes which
may exercise the virtues, or the studies which he developes. The work is
dedicated to Henry the Eighth. The design, the imaginary personage, the
author and the patron, are equally dignified. The style is grave; and it
would not be candid in a modern critic to observe that, in the progress
of time, the good sense has become too obvious, and the perpetual
illustrations from ancient history too familiar. The erudition in
philology of that day has become a schoolboy's learning. They had then
no other volumes to recur to of any authority, but what the ancients had
left.
Elyot had a notion that, for the last thousand years, the world had
deteriorated, and that the human mind had not expanded through the
course of ages. When he compared the writers of this long series of
centuries, the babbling, though the subtle, schoolmen, who had chained
us down to their artificial forms, with the great authors of antiquity,
there seemed an appearance of truth in his decision. Christianity had
not yet exhibited to modern Europe the refined moralities of Seneca, and
the curious knowledge of Plutarch, in the homilies of Saints and
Fathers; nor had its histories of man, confined to our monkish
annalists, emulated the narrative charms of Livy, nor the grandeur of
Tacitus. Of the poets of antiquity, Elyot declared that the English
language, at the time he wrote, could convey nothing equivalent, wanting
even words to express the delicacies, "the turns," and the euphony of
the Latin verse.
A curious evidence of the jejune state of the public mind at this period
appears in this volume. Here a learned and grave writer solemnly sets
forth several chapters on "that honest pastime of dancing," in which he
discovers a series of modern allegories. The various figures and
reciprocal movements between man and woman, "holding each other by the
hand," indicate the order, concord, prudence, and other virtues so
necessary for the common weal. The _singles_ and _reprinses_ exhibit the
virtue of circumspection, which excites the writer to a panegyric of the
father of the reigning sovereign. These ethics of the dance contain some
curious notices, and masters in the art might hence have embellished
their treatises on the philosophy of dance; for "in its wonderful
figures, which the Greeks do call _idea_, are comprehended so many
virtues and noble qualities." It is amusing to observe how men willingly
become the dupes of their fancies, by affecting to discover motives and
analogies, the most unconnected imaginable with the objects themselves.
Long after our polished statesman wrote, the Puritan excommunicated the
sinful dancer, and detected in the graceful evolutions of "the honour,"
the "brawl," and the "single," with all their moral movements, the
artifices of Satan, and the perdition of the souls of two partners,
dancing too well. It was the mode of that age thus to moralise, or
allegorise, on the common acts of life, and to sanction their idlest
amusements by some religious motive. At this period, in France, we find
a famous _Veneur_, Gaston Phebus, opening his treatise on "hunting" in
the spirit that Elyot had opened to us the mysteries of dancing. "By
hunting, we escape from the seven mortal sins, and therefore, the more
we hunt, the salvation of our souls will be the more secure. Every good
hunter in this world will have joyance, glee, and solace, (_joyeusete,
liesse, et deduit_,) and secure himself a place in Paradise, not perhaps
in the midst, but in the suburbs, because he has shunned idleness, the
root of all evil."
"The Boke of the Governor" must now be condemned to the solitary
imprisonment of the antiquary's cell, who will pick up many curious
circumstances relative to the manners of the age--always an amusing
subject of speculation, when we contemplate on the gradations of social
life. I suspect the world owed "The Governor" to a book more famous than
itself--the _Cortegiano_ of Castiglione, which appeared two years before
the first edition of this work of Elyot, and to whose excellence Elyot
could have been no stranger in his embassies to his holiness, and to the
emperor. But of "The Governor," and "The Cortegiano," what can we now
say, but that three centuries are fatal to the immortality of volumes,
which, in the infancy of literature, seemed to have flattered themselves
with a perpetuity of fame.
It was, however, a generous design, in an age of Latin, to attempt to
delight our countrymen by "the vulgar tongue;" but these "first fruits,"
as he calls them, gave their author a taste of the bitterness of "that
tree of knowledge."
In a subsequent work, "Of the Knowledge which maketh a Wise Man," Elyot
has recorded how he had laid himself open to "the vulgar." In the circle
of a Court there was equal peril in moralising, which was deemed to be a
rebuke, as in applying rusty stories, which were considered as nothing
less than disguised personalities. "The Boke" was not thankfully
received. The _persifleurs_, those butterflies who carry waspish stings,
accounted Sir Thomas to be of no little presumption, that "in noting
other men's vices he should correct _magnificat_." This odd neologism of
"magnificat" was a mystical coinage, which circulated among these
aristocratic exclusives who, as Elyot describes them, "like a galled
horse abiding no plaisters, be always knapping and kicking at such
examples and sentences as they do feel sharp, or do bite them." The
chapters on "The Diversity of Flatterers," and similar subjects, had
made many "a galled jade wince;" and in applying the salve, he got a
kick for the cure. They wondered why the knight wrote at all! "Other
much wiser men, and better learned than he, do forbear to write
anything." They inscribed modern names to his ancient portraits. The
worried author exclaims--"There be Gnathos in Spain as well as in
Greece; Pasquils in England as well as in Rome, &c. If men will seek for
them in England which I set in other places, I cannot let (hinder)
them." But in another work--"Image of Governance," 1540--when he
detailed "the monstrous living of the Emperor Heliogabalus," and
contrasted that gross epicurean with Severus, such a bold and open
execration of the vices of a luxurious Court could not avoid being
obvious to the royal sensualist and his companions, however the
character and the tale were removed to a bygone age.
In this early attempt to cultivate "the vulgar tongue," some cavilled
at his strange terms. It is a striking instance of the simplicity of the
critics at that early period of our language, that our author formally
explains the word _maturity_--"a Latin word, which I am constrained to
usurp, lacking a name in English, and which, though it be strange and
dark, yet may be understood as other words late comen out of Italy and
France, and made denizens among us." Augustus Caesar, it seems, had
frequently in his mouth this word _matura_--do maturely! as "if he
should have said, Do neither too much nor too little--too swiftly nor
too slowly." Elyot would confine the figurative Latin term to a
metaphysical designation of the acts of men in their most perfect state,
"reserving," as he says, "the word ripeness to fruit and other things,
separate from affairs, as we have now in usage." Elyot exults in having
augmented the English language by the introduction of this Latin term,
now made English for the first time! It has flourished as well as this
other, "the _redolent_ savours of sweet herbs and flowers." But his ear
was not always musical, and some of his neologisms are less
graceful--"_an alective_," to wit; "_fatigate_," to fatigue; "_ostent_,"
to show, and to "_sufficate_ some disputation." Such were the first weak
steps of the fathers of our language, who, however, culled for us many a
flower among their cockle.
But a murmur more prejudicial arose than the idle cavil of new and hard
words; for some asserted that "the Boke seemed to be overlong." Our
primeval author considered that "knowledge of wisdom cannot be shortly
declared." Elyot had not yet attained, by sufficient practice in
authorship, the secret, that the volume which he had so much pleasure in
writing could be over tedious in reading. "For those," he observes
sarcastically, "who be well willing, it is soon learned--in good faith
sooner than primero or gleek." The nation must have then consisted of
young readers, when a diminutive volume in twelves was deemed to be
"overlong." In this apology for his writings, he threw out an undaunted
declaration of his resolution to proceed with future volumes.--"If the
readers of my works, by the noble example of our most dear sovereign
lord, do justly and lovingly interpret my labours, I, during the residue
of my life, will now and then set forth such fruits of my study,
profitable, as I trust, unto this my country, leaving malicious readers
with their incurable fury." Such was the innocent criticism of our
earliest writer--his pen was hardly tipped with gall.
As all subjects were equally seductive to the artless pen of a primitive
author, who had yet no rivals to encounter in public, Elyot turned his
useful studies to a topic very opposite to that of political ethics. He
put forth "The Castle of Health," a medical treatise, which passed
through nearly as many honourable editions as "The Governor." It did
not, however, abate the number, though it changed the character of his
cavillers, who were now the whole corporate body of the physicians!
The author has told his amusing story in the preface to a third edition,
in 1541.
"Why should I be grieved with reproaches wherewith some of my country do
recompense me for my labours, taken without hope of temporal reward,
only for the fervent affection which I have ever borne toward the public
weal of my country? 'A worthy matter!' saith one; 'Sir Thomas Elyot has
become a physician, and writeth on physic, which beseemeth not a knight;
he might have been much better occupied.' Truly, if they will call him a
physician who is studious of the weal of his country, let men so name
me."
But there was no shame in studying this science, or setting forth any
book, being--
"Thereto provoked by the noble example of my noble master King Henry
VIII.; for his Highness hath not disdained to be the chief author of an
introduction to grammar for the children of his subjects.
"If physicians be angry that I have written physic in English, let them
remember that Greeks wrote in Greek, the Romans in Latin, and Avicenna
in Arabic, which were their own proper and maternal tongues. These were
paynims and Jews, but in this part of charity they far surmounted us
Christians."
Several years after, when our author reverted to his "Castle of Health,"
the Castle was brightened by the beams of public favour. Its author now
exulted that "It shall long preserve men, be some physicians never so
angry." The work had not been intended to depreciate medical
professors, but "for their commodity, by instructing the sick, and
observing a good order in diet, preventing the great causes of sickness,
or by which they could the sooner be cured." Our philosopher had
attempted to draw aside that mystifying veil with which some affected to
envelope the arcana of medicine, as if they were desirous "of writing in
cypher that none but themselves could read." Our author had anticipated
that revolution in medical science which afterwards, at a distant
period, has been productive of some of the ablest treatises in the
vernacular languages of Europe.
The patriotic studies of Elyot did not terminate in these ethical and
popular volumes, for he had taxed his daily diligence for his country's
weal. This appeared in "The Dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot, 1535," a
folio, which laid the foundation of our future lexicons, "declaring
Latin by English," as Elyot describes his own labour.
Elyot had suffered some disappointments as a courtier in the days of
Wolsey, who lavished the royal favours on churchmen. In a letter to Lord
Cromwell, he describes himself with a very narrow income, supporting his
establishment, "equal to any knight in the country where I dwell who
have much more to live on;" but a new office, involving considerable
expense in its maintenance, to which he had been just appointed, he
declares would be his ruin, having already discharged "five honest and
tall personages."--"I wot not by what malice of fortune I am constrained
to be in that office, whereunto is, as it were, appendent loss of money
and good name, all sharpness and diligence in justice now-a-days being
everywhere odious." And this was at a time when "I trusted to live
quietly, and by little and little to repay my creditors, and _to
reconcile myself to mine old studies_."
This letter conveys a favourable impression of the real character of
this learned man; but Elyot had condescended abjectly to join with the
herd in the general scramble for the monastic lands; and if he feigned
poverty, the degradation is not less. There are cruel epochs in a great
revolution; moments of trial which too often exhibit the lofty
philosopher shrinking into one of the people. It is probable that he
succeeded in his petition, for I find his name among the commissioners
appointed to make a general inquiry after lands belonging to the Church,
as also to the colleges of the universities, in 1534.
But in this day of weakness Elyot sunk far lower than petitioning for
suppressed lands. Elyot was suspected of inclining to Popery, and being
adverse to the new order of affairs. His former close intimacy with Sir
Thomas More contributed to this suspicion, and now, it is sad to relate,
he renounces this ancient and honourable friendship! Peter denied his
Master. "I beseech your good lordship now to lay apart the remembrance
of the amity betwixt me and Sir Thomas More, which was but _usque ad
aras_, as is the proverb, considering that I was never so much addicted
unto him as I was unto truth and fidelity towards my sovereign lord."
Was the influence of such illustrious friendships to be confined to
chimney-corners? Had Elyot not listened to the wisdom, and revered the
immutable fortitude, of "his great friend and crony?"--he, the stern
moralist, who, in his "Governor," had written a remarkable chapter on
"the constancy of friends," and had illustrated that passion by the
romantic tale of Titus and Gesippus, where the personal trials of both
parties far exceed those of the Damon and Pythias of antiquity, and are
so eloquently developed and so exquisitely narrated by the great Italian
novelist.
The literary history of Sir THOMAS ELYOT exhibits the difficulties
experienced by a primitive author in the earliest attempts to open a new
path to the cultivation of a vernacular literature; and it seems to have
required all the magnanimity of our author to sustain his superiority
among his own circle, by disdaining their petulant criticism, and by the
honest confidence he gathered as he proceeded, in the successive
editions of his writings.